You Look Different in Real Life

ONE
    S ometimes, I hit pause at a random moment when I’m on film and stare at my eyes, and try to figure out why they chose me.
    With the others, it’s obvious. Rory says those accidentally hilarious things, and Felix keeps bursting into song. Keira reads an advanced-level social studies textbook aloud. Then there’s Nate, with that whole Johnny Appleseed vibe. Maybe I was picked because my favorite answer to their questions was “Grrrr,” or because I wore pajamas to school three days in a row, or simply because they needed a girl with brown hair. It could have been all of these things, or none of them. So I searchthose eyes, those eyes I once saw the world through, and remind myself they’re the same ones I see it through now. But in all the searching, I’ve never found the spark that says, Watch this one .
    I’m guessing Ian Reid didn’t find it either, and this is why he dumped me.
    “You’re awesome, Justine,” he said as we sat in his vintage Jeep, not going inside to the party we were supposed to be going inside to. “But I feel like we’re better off as friends.”
    Translated, I’m pretty sure that means: The thought of kissing you—or touching you at all, really—makes me want to hurl, and when you look at me with love you resemble a chipmunk.
    My heart doubled over from the punch, hacked a bit, then fell to the floor of its little heart studio apartment.
    But on the outside, I just nodded and spun out words like okay and fine and cool. That was before Christmas and now it’s March, and there isn’t a single hour when I’m not thinking about the fact that for seven weeks I had someone, and then I didn’t, and how that works exactly.
    This hour, I’m pondering it while sitting on a low stone wall outside the town library. It’s snowing again, falling in bite-size chunks so fluffy they look fake. I’ve got an overdue copy of The Graduate on DVD tucked inside my parka and I’ll go in and return it, eventually. Well, yes, the stone is cold down there. Very, in fact. But thisis so peaceful, with my mother at the supermarket and thus out of nagging range, and I love the way Main Street looks before the plows come through. The air feels eerie-hushed, and above me, everything is colorless, a striking shade of utter blank.
    In the distance to the west, I can see our town’s mountains. They’re not normal mountains with peaks. They’re ridge mountains, low and wide and gracefully deformed. You know they’re beautiful but have no idea why. On top of one is a stone tower visible from miles away with windows that look like eyes, and if you stare at it long enough, it always seems to be staring back.
    I imagine that Ian is here, perched on the wall beside me, with his arm around my waist, his chin on my shoulder, and this time I don’t care how we look or that some idiot might yell, “Get a room!” No, wait. We lie down on the lawn and make snow angels. I know that’s the stuff of trite Hollywood movies but maybe that’s where I went wrong. Maybe that’s what he wanted.
    When we got together, people called us JustIan . The sun looked different in the sky, like it recognized me.
    And with that thought, the hurt comes again. It’s a familiar hurt, and literal too. It starts at my belly button and pushes into me, as if someone’s trying to dig a tunnel straight through to my back but dammit, there are all these organs in the way.
    “Justine?”
    The voice pops against the stillness of the air. Sharp and high. Familiar, but not really.
    I turn toward the voice. There’s a man and a woman standing five feet in front of me, wearing ankle-length puffy down coats and matching fleece hats right out of the clearance pages of an outerwear catalog. He’s in black; she’s in silver. They’re each holding a cup from the chain coffee place across the street.
    Then I realize who these people are, and the cramp goes supernova inside me.
    “Is that you, Justine?” the woman asks again.
    I don’t see how I can deny it.
    “Yeah, it’s me.” I force myself to say her name. “Leslie?”
    In that moment as her eyes widen, her brows lift—her face expands in every direction—I think about how I’ve seen her over the last five years, in pictures, but she hasn’t seen me , and that makes me feel a tiny bit powerful.
    “Oh my God!” she says, quickly passing her cup to the guy, her husband, Lance, and stepping forward. Her hands fly toward my cheeks, and I let them land, feeling the jolt of